Stories by Kristina Davis

When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that law enforcement must get a warrant to search cellphones, the historic opinion changed police protocol across the nation and set a strong precedent supporting privacy in a technological era. As far as rulings go, the one in Riley v. California was ...

SAN DIEGO A fake modeling agent is accused of extorting women for sex acts and money in exchange for agreeing not to publish their nude photographs online, prosecutors said Friday. Maverick “Michael” Mendez Rosales, 24, pleaded not guilty in San Diego Superior Court Friday afternoon to several felonies, including rape, ...

San Diego  A lawsuit claiming the “handmade” labels on Maker’s Mark bourbon whiskey were misleading to consumers was dismissed by a judge this week in San Diego federal court. In his ruling filed Monday, U.S. District Judge John A. Houston said “handmade cannot reasonably be interpreted as meaning literally ...

Those who knew Jake Clyde Merendino say he was kind, trusting and generous to a fault. He enjoyed the finer things in life, and had the money to do so. It’s a combination of traits that may have made him easy prey. Early in the morning of May 2 — ...

The missions were carried out under the cover of darkness, in the name of animal activism. Joseph Buddenberg and Nicole Kissane are accused of vandalizing a family-run fur shop in San Diego, freeing thousands of minks from Idaho to Pennsylvania and trying to flood the home of a fur auctioneer ...

the voter-approved law that reduced some low-level felonies to misdemeanors — applies equally to juveniles as well as adults. The ruling was made Thursday in the case of one San Diego County teen but effectively sets a legal precedent for more than 100 other minors in the county who have ...

Could it really be over? Last week, the federal government officially transferred the land underneath the Mount Soledad cross to private hands, a significant move that might effectively conclude the decades-long court struggle over the display of the religious symbol. But scrutiny of the deal is just now beginning, and ...

In the spring of 2013, the FBI began investigating a retired San Diego police detective after getting tipped that he was allegedly bribing his former colleagues in the vice unit. Agents set up an undercover sting and obtained a wiretap in hopes of catching Ernesto Encinas in the act. In ...

The widow of a retired San Diego police criminalist who was under investigation in the 1984 slaying of a teenage girl filed a lawsuit Thursday, accusing detectives of botching the case and driving her husband to suicide. The 67-page lawsuit, filed in San Diego federal court, claims cross-contamination at the ...

Juries typically don’t like to return verdicts of not guilty by reason of insanity, a phenomenon that was once again illustrated in the case against Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes Thursday. The jury found Holmes, a former San Diegan, guilty in the massacre that left 12 dead and 70 ...

Downtown San Diego  It took U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy six days to write the landmark majority decision allowing same-sex marriage nationwide. Like all major opinions, it was one that had to be able to stand on its own despite the highly charged emotions surrounding the case — ...

San Diego  A judge ruled Friday that the city of San Diego was correct in revoking the adult-entertainment license for Cheetahs strip club, citing repeated violations by dancers documented by undercover police officers. The Kearny Mesa club’s owner, Suzanne Coe, had asked the court to review a city administrative ...

Federal prosecutors filed a flurry of court documents over the holiday weekend in the illegal campaign donation case involving a Mexican tycoon, revealing new details about the extent of his relationship with District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and the undercover sting that led another defendant to be charged with bribing a ...